Dangerous fungal lung infections could be treated with CAR T-cells

Carissa Wong is a person.

A study in mice suggests that CAR T-cells can be used to treat life threatening lung infections.

People breathe in a fungus that is found in the air and soil. If we are healthy, our immune systems will usually clear any fungus out of the lungs before it harms us.

In people with suppressed immune systems, the fungus can grow in the lungs and cause death.

Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis can be treated with antifungal drugs, but they can be harmful to the body, and don't always work against some versions of the disease.

Immune cells called T-cells were taken from people without immune system issues in order to find an alternative treatment. They created CARs on their surface by modifying them to make them. There are CARs on the cell wall. CAR T-cells can be used to track down and kill invaders.

The approach was tested on mice with suppressed immune systems. Some mice were treated with CAR T-cells a day later, but the rest of the mice were not.

Almost all of the mice that were treated with CAR T-cells survived two weeks after being exposed to the fungus.

Animals that were treated with CAR T-cells had less fungus in their lungs than animals that were not.

The study is an elegant application of cellular immunotherapy to a difficult-to-treat infection that causes substantial morbidity and mortality in immune compromised humans.

There is more work to be done before we know if CAR T-cells can treat infections.

We need to know if the CAR T-cells will help when mice or humans are being treated with immune-suppressing therapies.

People with weakened immune systems might not have enough T-cells for a treatment like this to work.

According to the study authors, CAR T-cells derived from other people could be frozen and used to address this issue.

The journal is called Science Translational Medicine.

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